Promise Not To Promise Anymore
by thegirlwiththeradishearrings
Summary: Modern AU vignettes of Jon/Arya through the evolution of their relationship.
1. Promise Not To Promise Anymore

Her path is that of popcorn and empty chocolate wrappers, bare toes braving the cesspool of carpet stained with soda and hot sauce. It smells like laundry detergent, unwashed clothes, and there's a pungent undertone of mouthwash. The sink in the bathroom is dripping inconspicuously, like static it clings along the fringes of the room, barely audible, but occupying the vacant space. Empty pizza boxes and foil wrappings are singularly the only decor, the fragrance of cheese packets mingling with the greasy cardboard, abandoned among unpaired socks.

Casualties of the packing remain untouched: old shirts crumpled amongst the bed sheets, jeans that had been outgrown, underwear with too many holes. She finds a container full of tic tacs on the bedside table that were never opened, and empty bottles of shampoo scatter the bathroom counter. A decrepit tube of toothpaste lies discarded on the floor beside the toilet. The gooey white substance has conquered its prison and coated the cap so that when she picks it up her fingers are assaulted by the sticky paste and stink of mint.

If memories could talk, this room would sing: a cacophony orchestrated from years of their companionship. The door hinges would creak with their off-key singing, the wood panels would shake at one in the morning from their video game marathons, widows would rattle from shrieks eclipsed by feathers as he chased her about the room, swinging pillows and taking cover behind a ripped beanbag. The clicking of disposable cameras would echo through the cracks in the paint and the sound of his snoring would flutter the cobwebs collecting in the corners and her sighs would find solace in the shadowy recesses inside cupboards. The memories of their whispers would litter the carpet like pizza crust skeletons, and the sound of his voice in the morning would match the croak of the shower sputtering to life. She remembers the sound of their arguments like the yanking of the blinds as they rolled up too quickly: the violent ascension and the jerk of the cord, the plastic clashing with the glass, before it fell silent and relapsed into comfort again.

Rain taps the roof and she hums something ridiculous so she won't feel alone. Her tiny feet lapse into his rain boots left by the closet, the rubber insides curving to the contours of his feet instead of hers. She shifts to where his toes once fit; the place where they wore the soles down. He is closer this way.

She breathes deep and fills her lungs with the air of a thousand days they spent curled in the musty blankets, the dip of the mattress- barely fitting them both, her socks rubbing against his ankles and scratch of his unshaven cheeks along the crown of her head. She breathes, yet the feeling of relief never permeates. She supposes the sensation of drowning is not something that can be lifted. She wants to be ripped from the water, is tired of realizing she is not whole, but broken, the shock coming so swift and sudden she inhales water and chokes.

The clock on the nightstand is stuck and blinks the same numbers as if it forgot how to function.

She wiggles her toes inside the boots, disrupting the alinement of their feet, to remember she is not Jon, but Arya. To remember Jon has left her alone in this old room bursting at the seams with their past to which she is the only participant and it feels wrong without him here, too. It is imprinted with their lives; she is the audience, watching the show as it plays out before her in this room that smells of him and already knowing how the final act will end.

It ends with him walking from this old room and into a car that will drive north and keep going until she cannot see the back of his head in the passenger seat.

Arya is not Jon and she glances at the clock which is still stuck on the numbers lit green and blinking for no one to see because no one will be in this room again. At least not anyone who matters. No one who matters will make memories in this room made of his serious eyes and her ripped cuticles, because all that matters is gone and Jon is gone. The numbers are still stuck and so is Arya. She is stuck in the rings of rust around the shower drain and the crooked curtains and drawings made of their breath along the window panes, written messages on the mirror and she will never be unstuck.


	2. Dots on Maps

Jon stumbles through the threshold of his room, grappling with the doorframe to keep his balance. He looks down quizzically at the pair of ratty tennis shoes tangled around his ankles before grouchily exhaling. "Arya. The shoes. _Again_."

"Uh-sorry," she replies in a tone utterly devoid of concern, preoccupied. The youngest Stark sister stands on Jon's unmade bed, toes entwined with the sheets as she struggles to tack up a very large world map to his wall.

"What're you doing with that old thing?" Jon shakes his feet free of the laces and raises a brow at the tattered relic of their childhood. He hadn't seen it in ages, not since Arya's mum had cleaned their rooms out a couple of years ago.

"You know when people tell you not to do something, but them telling you not to do it just kinda reinforces the whole idea in your head? So that even if you try really hard-"

"I doubt you tried at all."

"Shut up. But even if you try really hard to be a good daughter and not disobey, you do it anyway?" Her scruffy voice is muffled against the wall, but Jon is adept at translating the language of Arya Stark.

"Yeah, I suppose…?"

"Well, mum told me not to go up to the attic until dad cleared some junk away… she said it wasn't safe, but I went anyway- I needed to get my old hockey pads to play with Gendry and Hotpie, but I couldn't find 'em, turns out they were in my closet… but guess what I found instead!" She bounces on her tiptoes gleefully while attempting to reach the corner with a tac, the extension of her body forcing Robb's old sweatshirt to rise up around her waist. No doubt she nicked it from his room without asking like she always did. The boys often caught her wearing their jackets and old jerseys. It made Catelyn positively irate, which was probably the reason Arya kept the trend. "_I found_ _our map_!"

"Ah, I see. But that doesn't explain why you're obstructing my wall with it..."

She shoots him a withering look over her shoulder before plunging the last tac into the corner of Russia. Sighing, she violently pushes stray bits of hair out of her face, shoving her hands onto her hips victoriously. She stands back to admire her handiwork. Jon smirks at her back, noticing how Arya's sloppy bun is beginning to sag at the nape of her neck and there's a pretty pink flush creeping up her cheeks.

"_Ah, crap_," she groans, slapping her forehead. The map is tragically crooked. The corner of Alaska is too high, the bottom of Australia too low. (Or, rather, where Australia would be if Ghost hadn't chewed it off along with half of Antarctica.) "You know what? I don't even care anymore," she declares a tad breathless.

In the shadow of defeat, Arya plops down on the mattress, her back still to Jon, causing the springs to squeak out in protest. Jon mirrors his sister, sliding his back against the opposing wall and falling gracelessly into a slump on the floor. His head rolls about his neck lazily and he observes his favorite sibling with a comfortable fondness.

She's grown a few inches taller, but Jon still tops her by a foot or so.

Arya lets her arms hang over the side of the bed, followed shortly by the upper-half of her body as she sluggishly slides upside-down until her head touches the carpet. Jon chuckles as her face floods with a ghastly shade of red.

"I've been thinking about Nova Scotia. You haven't forgotten about Nova Scotia, have you?" Her voice gets small and she sucks at her bottom lip.

Jon pauses. "No, I remember Nova Scotia," he grins. "And the tortoises in the Galapagos islands."

Arya stops worrying at her lip and cracks Jon a smile. "You promised, y'know."

"I know I did."

She props her feet against the wall, tracing her toes along the ragged lines where Ghost's teeth marred the map. She's wearing stripped socks that crumple around her skinny ankles and scale up past her knobby knees. There's a hole on her left big toe and Jon notices how the purple nail polish from months before has yet to chip away completely.

"Tortoises can live for over a hundred years, did you know?" Her fingers drift over the carpet absentmindedly, tracing the dirty footprints he's failed to vacuum, much to her mum's disappointment.

Jon scratches his cheek, avoiding Arya's eyes. "Listen, Arya…."

Before he can finish his thought a dirty sock collides with his forehead. "NO! No no no _no_!" Arya shouts into the blankets, stomping her heels into the wall causing the windowpanes to rattle. "You can't _UN_-promise this, Jon! You said- you said we would see the lighthouse on Peggy's Cove! You said we would see it together! How am I supposed do it by myself?"

Jon feels his organs lurching in his belly and his heart slipping uncomfortably through his ribs. "Just listen, would you? I've been thinking about the Night's Watch-"

"Oh, bugger the Night's Watch!"

"Arya-"

"SHUT UP." Her breath comes in angry heaves between words. "That's not fair, you know it isn't! You said we'd see things, that's what you promised! There's no take backs on promises."

"That was years ago, Arya…"

"It still counts. How am I supposed to go it alone, huh? Remember Winterland?"

Jon does, in fact, remember atrocious Winterland: an amusement park themed like winter all year long. The park consisted of a massive stretch of food trolleys all painted dusty white, while fake snow coated every surface in a blanket of white. They'd gone, unremarkably, on Christmas day. Amidst the crowds of tourists and costumed staff members, holiday music chiming from speakers along the walk, Arya had strayed from their group.

Everyone had spread out to search for her, but it was Jon who found her. It had taken him the better part of an hour to track her down. She'd been curled up between two snack carts, her mouth covered in blue dye from a snow cone she'd surreptitiously gobbled down after Catelyn and Ned had told her to wait. When she saw him she started to cry and ran crashing into him, all pointy elbows and shaky knees. Jon wiped her mouth free of the ice and sweet sauce and gave her a reassuring smile. Teary-eyed Arya had buried her face into his chest and clutched at the scarf about his neck-she'd made it for him: a ghastly grey and blue stripped thing, but she'd gifted it to him all red faced and furious because the one Sansa gave to Robb had been meticulously stitched and she felt jealous. Jon had made a point of wearing it often, which seemed to make her happy.

"How could I forget Winterland? Classic bloody Arya. Always doing whatever she very well pleases."

"And you know I'll do it, Jon. _I'll go without you_." She adamantly pipes from between the pillows. She looks back at the crooked map, fingers bunching into the folds of Robb's rugby jacket. Silence, like dust, settles along the surfaces of the room. Jon disrupts the quiet.

"I'll follow you then."

She cocks her head over her shoulder then, peeking out between locks of dark hair that have messily shuffled into her eyes. Grey eyes that are so alike his own. "You mean it?" He nods slowly against the wall. "You better not be lying, Jon. If you are, I'll punch you."

He drags a finger along his chest. "Cross my heart, Arya Stark. Wherever you go, I'll follow."


End file.
